SPARQL 1.1 Update provides a means to change the state of the database using a query-like syntax. SPARQL Update has similarities to SQLINSERTINTO, UPDATEWHERE and DELETEFROM behaviour. For full details, see the W3C SPARQL Update working group page.

SPARQL 1.1 Federation provides extensions to the query syntax for executing distributed queries over any number of SPARQL endpoints. This feature is very powerful, and allows integration of RDF data from different sources using a single query.

For example, to discover DBpedia resources about people who have the same names as those stored in a local repository, use the following query:

However, such a query is very inefficient, because no intermediate bindings are passed between endpoints. Instead, both subqueries execute independently, requiring the second subquery to return all Xrdfs:labelY statements that it stores. These are then joined locally to the (likely much smaller) results of the first subquery.

GET - fetches statements in the named graph from the repository in the requested format.

PUT - updates data in the named graph in the repository, replacing any existing data in the named graph with the supplied data. The data supplied with this request is expected to contain an RDF document in one of the supported RDF formats.

DELETE - deletes all data in the specified named graph in the repository.

POST - updates data in the named graph in the repository by adding the supplied data to any existing data in the named graph. The data supplied with this request is expected to contain an RDF document in one of the supported RDF formats.